I recently shared an observation on Facebook regarding the process I am walking in terms of learning when to act/do/push and when to step back and allow things to unfold:
“With studying Egoscue, I’ve become aware of the extent to which my body is out of alignment and I’ve been using Egoscue exercises to support my body to realign to an effective posture from head to toe. It’s a ‘big job’, so the automatic assumption was that it means I have to do a lot of work. Truth is, our bodies are always seeking balance and optimal alignment, but they can’t do it alone and need our support to establish new habits and regain functional mobility in all their parts. So, when practicing Egoscue, it is similar to using homeopathy, through specific exercises you’re communicating with the body and supporting it to do more effectively what it is already busy trying to do on its own. Within that – it doesn’t help to ‘constantly be doing Egoscue’ because it doesn’t help to send the same message 10 times over in rapid succession, nor does it help to overwhelm the body with too many different messages by including too many exercises in your routine or changing your routine too frequently. You try to send the right message and you try to send a clear message, then you give time to allow the body to respond.
As a longtime control-freak I tend to struggle with flow - doing what I need to do, but then also being able to let go and allowing others to do their thing so that together something amazing can take place. It's like riding a bike downhill. I need to at first paddle and get the motion started, but if I keep paddling as the bike is in motion and there are other forces at play that are keeping the bike going, then for me to continue paddling is not only unnecessary but also likely to interfere with the movement process that is already in effect, and causing the bike (and me with it) to crash. So, this is what I am learning - when to paddle, and when to 'cruise'. There’s much more to say on this point, so I will leave it to here for now and expand in a blog to come!”
I said I would expand in a blog, so here it is 😊.
Another example where this pattern rears its head is in the context of group projects. The very nature of a group project is that it takes a group for that particular project to be realized and reach its full potential and means I have to allow each member of that group to walk their points so that the members and each one's points can come together as an effective and balanced whole. Maybe you’ve experienced that person in a group project that is overbearing, looking over everyone’s shoulders and continuously tries to set the pace they think others need to be moving at, or maybe you’ve been that person yourself – either way, you might have noticed how it tends to interfere and ‘work against the grain’ of the ‘natural flow’ of the group, and leads to frustration, anxiety, doubt and creates an unpleasant environment to work from. Instead of simply doing what I need to do and allow others to do their part, the tendency is to want to do everything.
When slowing myself down as this pattern reared its head, I identified two specific fears that I bump in to - the one fear being that “I am kidding myself within the idea that I need to let go and I’m using it as a justification to slack off and I’m actually not doing enough” - and the second one being a fear of 'putting faith' in something/someone outside myself.
When you’re someone who is able to focus and work on something for a long time – who can ‘throw themselves into something’ and seemingly not stop until it’s done (barring of course the necessary breaks for food, sleep, bathroom visits, etc) – it feels very counterintuitive to take a step back and allow points to unfold, and more-so, to acknowledge this stepping back as an equally necessary and contributory part of the overall creation process. This stems of course also from our overall value-system as impulsed by the culture, education and money system we grew up in – that ‘working hard’ = ‘good’ and ‘doing nothing’ = ‘lazy’ = ‘bad’. It’s a polarized (read: limited black-and-white) perspective on something that in reality includes an array of scenarios, expressions and contributing factors, each with their own set of consequences.
How I am practically working with this fear of not doing enough in the context of group projects, or any other kind of co-creation process for that matter, is to ask myself ‘where are we at’. I look at the whole of the point/project and create on overview by looking at: what is in place, what is not in place, what is moving and what is not moving? Once I have the overview, I ask myself: For the things that are NOT in place, and/or NOT moving effectively, are there things that need to be done, and if so, firstly, am I the one to do it and secondly, is now the time to do it? This last part of the question is quite key, because I've had a tendency of 'jumping into action' when seeing something that needs to be done, without considering that I may not actually be the best person for that task, while also rushing things, fearfully trying to make things happen/force things to happen before their time. I've become quite familiar with the experience of 'going against' the 'alignment of what is here'. While I’m often not sure who would be best suited for something or when it is or will be the right time for something, I am quite attuned to knowing when something is not my point and when it's not the right time. And so, at this stage, this has been a guide for me, to slow down, to hold my tongue, to let go and accept that it’s not because I don’t see/know exactly how something is going to be done or by whom – that it won’t be done. Or, who knows, maybe an entirely new path will open up that will make the point that seemingly urgently needs direction now, irrelevant in hindsight.
In terms of the fear of placing faith in something/someone outside of myself… this one I didn’t quite see what to do with. What threw me was the word ‘faith’. It’s like a word that I’ve tried to exclude from my ‘living vocabulary’, because I so much connected and associated it to religion and abdication of responsibility that I didn’t see this word as being relevant or worthy of my time and consideration. Yet, here it was now part of a fear I was living, so even in resisting the word, it was in fact already a part of me through this fear, but at the moment, the word and its definition still undirected. So, as I looked at this fear, the only direction I saw as a first step to address the fear as a whole, was to redefine the word ‘faith’. When I asked myself what Faith is/can be as a living expression, what came up is: faith is the acceptance of what I already know to be true, even if I can’t explain it. Within this definition, the word is redirected to what is here within and as me, and has actually little to do with ‘trusting something or someone else’. What I have practiced when fears come up around things that are outside of my direct sphere of responsibility/control within a project/co-creation process, was to move past the fears and connect with what is here – and most often, when I look at ‘how everyone is doing’, I know that all is moving effectively, that the points that need to come through are coming through/will come through.
And yes, it’s kind of creepy to trust such points, where you know something to be true, not for any reason than it’s here, and it’s undeniable – but you can’t explain it, you have no list of reasons why, you can't justify it to yourself. For instance, in the end, faith was the deciding factor in my move to Panama, because I knew it would be good for me to come here, a knowing that went beyond the pros and cons lists we’d created, a knowing that couldn’t be explained by facts or numbers. It was here, and it was unwavering, so I accepted it.
And so I continue to learn to ride the bike of co-creation – when to paddle and when to cruise – a process which I am finding to be most fascinating and is challenging me more than ever to walk moment-to-moment, breath by breath – sticking to what is here and letting go of the need to control, to overcomplicate and to rationalize, and instead simply trusting, directing and expressing myself.
Thank you for reading.
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